Abstract
Aim: The aim of the article is to demonstrate that despite wide variety of areas involving security issues, there exists their common measure and benchmark. The author raised and confirmed a hypothesis that there is a tool allowing for qualitative or quantitative description of security. A risk analysis is such an instrument.
Methodology: The article reviews the basic literature summarising current achievements in security sciences. The author proposes a tool that enables both risk analysis and risk management, which is a way of developing resilience to threats.
Results: The author indicates two main directions of research works. The first one pertains to engineering approach to solving safety problems, which falls within technical field of science. The second one employs social and political methods of research and comes under social science. Links between them are the subject of author's analysis. Assuming that risk is a measure of safety, the author made a generalisation which allows to integrate the methods of the above mentioned science fields into unified methodology of risk assessment. Related to this, for the purposes of this article the notion of a generalised risk was defined. It incorporates both expert methods of solving problems and a socio-political factor, namely social agitation. The method of aggregating different hazard consequences categories was presented by means of the transformation matrix. Protection systems effectiveness was defined through introduction of the supplementary and system barriers concept to the risk assessment. As a result, a method for evaluating resilience of protected systems, particularly in public administration units as well as in civil protection system. The article also indicates research fields which need deeper exploration, especially in the context of measures and indicators of risk and social resilience.
Conclusions: The theoretical foundations of security studies presented in the article offer a holistic view on questions of safety. Based on the analysis and synthesis of existing knowledge new solutions were proposed in regard to local community resilience.
Keywords: risk, risk assessment, risk measure, risk indicators, outrage, resilience, resilience matrix
Type of article: review article